And, yes, I DO take it personally: The never-ending Katrina tragedy [UPDATE]

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Friday, December 21, 2007

The never-ending Katrina tragedy [UPDATE]

i've been following this story for some time, but i was never in doubt about the outcome...

After protesters clashed violently with the police inside and outside the New Orleans City Council chambers on Thursday, the Council voted unanimously to allow the federal government to demolish 4,500 apartments in the four biggest public housing projects here.

The Council also called on the Department of Housing and Urban Development to reopen some apartments in the closed projects immediately and to rebuild all of the public housing units that it bulldozes. The agency plans to replace barracks-style projects, known as “the bricks,” with mixed-income developments.

“We need affordable housing in this city,” said Shelley Stephenson Midura, a Council member who proposed the resolution that was adopted. But, she added, “public housing ought not to be the warehouse for the poor.”

Advocates for public housing residents contended that the agency’s plan would not provide enough housing for the 3,000 families who lived in the projects before Hurricane Katrina, almost all of them black. Many of them have not been able to return to the city, and some protesters said they were being deliberately excluded from New Orleans.

"deliberately excluded from new orleans..." yep, that was the plan, all right... stop and think for a moment... how do you think you would feel if the place that had been your family's home for generations was devastated by a natural disaster, forcing you to temporarily relocate, and, when you want to come back, those with the power and the money who call the shots in that city, your city, effectively make it impossible for you to return...? why do you think so many people were evacuated to locations so far away from new orleans...? why do you think it has taken so long to seriously begin reconstruction...? the powerful, monied elites see new orleans as a wonderful, historic, private playground, as well as a gigantic opportunity to continue enriching themselves in the process... now that those inconvenient and unpleasant to look at poor black people are out of the way, let the good times roll...